Our Hearts of Grass
by The Lady Avaritia
Summary: Orochimaru, after a drink too many reminisces about fonder times with his teammates.


**Title:** Our Hearts of Grass

**Rating: T**  
><strong>Spoilers: G<strong>eneral

**Characters**: the Sannin; Kabuto

**Summary: Orochimaru, after a drink too many reminisces about fonder times with his teammates.  
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**Disclaimer: **disclaimed

**Author Note: **

**Author: **_Lady Avaritia_

_Grass is so easy to bend and twist. You can toy with it, and then you can rip it our out in one swift motion._

_Like a human heart._

_The story I'm about to tell you, Kabuto, is a story I've never told anyone else. Are you listening?_

Yes, Orochimaru-sama.

_Good, good. it's a part of who I am, and to a large extent it's a part of the reason I left Konoha. You know about my old teammates, correct? Of course you do. I've spoken about them, haven't I? the Legendary Sannin. Some good it did us, being legends! We are all that now – the dusty ghost of a fonder time… anyway._

_We had Tsunade, the golden princess. You've seen her… all golden hair, and honey eyes, and caramel skin, and…_

…breasts, legs, ass?

_Yes, Kabuto, don't interrupt me please. And of course, Jiraiya, named after some random gallant hero of a samurai story…he was as far from gallant as it got, unless he was attempting to sleep with someone. Then he was chivalry incarnate. Oh, Jiraiya and Tsunade… I loved them those two, you can't even imagine. I loved them both to death. I would've died for them. I almost did, too. _

Really?

_Yes, and this is the story of it. As you are aware there is a scar on my chest that never disappears no matter how many bodies I go through…_

Yes?

_I got this scar when I saved them. Listen careful now, and stop touching my arms, they won't heal through your sheer willpower, or mine, for the same matter. _

_Yes, Orochimaru-sama. I'm sorry._

_Don't be. Where was I? ah, yes. Right. It was a dark and stormy night. I know it's cliché but it's exactly what it was. We were in the capital of the Rice country. It's a neutral territory, as you know, and the capital is called the Sin City for a reason. That place has more brothels, bars and casinos in the same place than the entire Fire Country! We were there as an escort for an important Jashinist who wanted to discuss building a Jashin temple in the city with the Lady Daimyo. Well, Jashin temple, my ass! That woman was all, but the religious old woman she pretended to be. As you've probably read, the Jashin faith has two different groups of believers. Those who believe that true closeness to their god can be achieved only through human sacrifice, and those, who believe that to please their god they have to enjoy the gift of immortality he has bestowed upon them to its fullest, and pray a lot. I'm quoting word for word the two versions of their Bible. Never mind. Can you guess which part of the faith our client believed in?_

The painful one?

_Hahahahahaha! Yes, precisely. See, Jashinists aren't beyond killing people for money. It still counts as a sacrifice, if you pray while doing it. And that lady was a hired professional with the mission of ending the Three Sannin. She almost ended me, I should tell you. _

_This whole ordeal happened some time after Tsunade's lover, Dan got his insides splattered all over a wood floor. I swear I almost cheered when I saw him die, I couldn't stand him. back to what I was saying. Tsunade was out of it on that mission. Really, really out of it. She looked like a shadow. Her eyes were hollow and empty, and there were rings under them that looked like shadows. Her skin was like ashes, and she walked a little slumped, like she was hurting. Jiraiya wasn't much better. He was all sad and put out for Tsunade. I seemed to be the only one with his wits gathered. If I wasn't so nearly socipathic, you'd have heard of me only in the history textbooks, in the index of deceased fallen heroes. We were walking, just before the gates of the Sin City. Such magnificent gates! Pure gleaming gold in the shape of dragons wrapped around the door frame, and giant panels of blood red wood engraved with mystical creatures of all sizes and shapes. On the very top of the gates form copper and gold was the motto of the city, and the motto of the Lady Daimyo – Sin is merely the most graceful of compliments._

_People came and go. The rich in their silk and velvet, and the poor, in rags, desperate skeletal creatures hoping to gain a little something from the City of Pleasures. _

_Out client wanted a break, so we took one. I still se like it was yesterday. Tsunade was leaning on a tree staring dully at the people passing. Jiraiya was flat on his stomach, attempting to peek under the long kimonos and dresses on the women. She went for him first. She wore a kimono with wide sleeves, and she produced a sword from one of them. She went to slice his head off. I kicked him away into a tree. She made a swing to my left, to go for Tsunade. Tsunade…she hadn't noticed anything. She just stood there, eyes on the road, deaf and numb. I remember yelling out her name. time slowed to a crawl. I had all the time in the world to jump in front of her and unsheathe Kusanagi. I cut the hit off. The damn Jashinist went at me again. She almost cut my left arm off. Once she got the blood on her sword, she seemed oddly…gleeful. Then she started drawing that symbol on the ground with her foot. The Jashin symbol, you know, the one. A triangle inside a circle. I prepared to attack her with one of my shadow snakes. I was going to incapitate her somehow, and then behead her. Try killing somebody when your body can't move because your head is fifteen feet away from it. The snake wrapped around her sword arm and bit a huge chunk of her shoulder. I almost doubled over in pain. There was blood sipping though my sleeve. That bitch… she smiled. Rain was beating on us so hard, it felt like we were drowning. And she was bloody, and she was smiling, like she knew some joke I wasn't in on. Jiraiya was unconscious. I'd pretty much given on Tsunade. And the Jashinist. She took her sword and stabbed herself. And while she did that, Tsunade, out of nowhere pushed her out of the circle. The assassin missed her own heart, thereby missing mine. Tsunade ripped the head off the bitch with her bare hands. I was on the muddy ground, with my blood soaking my clothes. All I could think was 'damn, I liked that kimono!' I woke some days later in one of the better hotels in the city to the sound of Jiraiya making friends with one of the servant girls in the other room. My lips were dry, and my chest hurt, and I was looking at the ceiling with little cherubs painted on it, and I thought about nothing. Jiraiya came by a little later, wrapped in nothing but a thin white sheet, and explained that Tsunade had healed me, then they'd carried me to the hotel. He hadn't seen her since. Yes, he was worried, yes, he'd looked for her, and we could just wait. I dressed. I went down, and I found the dirtiest, most sinkholish place in the entire city, with the cheapest, worst alcohol, and ugliest woman, and got myself hammered with something that should have passed for sake but didn't. my hangover the other morning was a work of art, and so was the nameless woman I woke next to. the kind of art that makes you want to run out the fire escape to your immediate death, because it's so horrendously painful. I returned to the hotel afterwards. Jiraiya was making friends very quickly, and I went through all the rundown bars in the city, and consumed way more alcohol than it was good for my liver. Four days later Tsunade surfaced form one casino, and she looked worse than I've ever seen her. She needed money because she'd lost all she had. I gave her my part of the mission pay. She disappeared again. We waited for two weeks, and when she didn't show up, I asked Jiraiya to leave. He was in a mad romance with a stripper. I left alone. _

_I didn't see him for years until he tried to stop me from leaving Konoha. I turned away from him. I went to the Sin City, and spent there about two months. I've never gambled, drank and slept around as much as I did then. It was my dark period, so to speak. I played to lose. I wanted to lose. I wanted to lose everything. My money, my identity, the clothes on my back, my feelings, my memories… I wanted to lose myself. I never lost a single game. I gambled desperately, mindlessly. I always won. I wanted to throw it all away, at that time, and never managed to. I understood Tsunade. I even saw her. She was practically in rags. We got drunk. We woke up in the same bed, and we might have had sex, but neither of us remembers. _

_She was asleep on the bed when I left. That night I stole another body for the first time. He was young man, probably a mercenary off duty. He was strong, and youthful, barely eighteen, and I was already old and tired and my liver was shutting down on me. I performed the jutsu with no preparation. A part of me hoped it wouldn't work and I would die. It worked. That same night I found an orphan boy with liver hair all alone on the street. It looked pathetic, small, dirty, and dressed in rags. I picked it up. _

_That was me… I remember…barely._

_Ha! I doubt so. You were what…two years old, maybe even younger, it was hard to say, you were so malnutrated. Anyway, I'm telling you this whole thing with a point._

A point?

_Yes, Kabuto. Have I ever told you anything that you couldn't benefit from?_

No.

_Indeed. So I'm telling you this, so that you know…Say no to drinking, drugs and gambling. It's as simple as that. Or else, you might end up like me, with some ungrateful teenager to take care of. _

You mean to say, an ungrateful teenager to take care of **you?**

_Kabuto…you really are something. _

And the scar?

_Well, I found out that blessed weapons wielded by a zealous Jashinist leave scars that never go away no matter what you do. It's reminder of sorts, I guess. About that time, about what happened…_

_You make a very philosophically inclined drunk, Orochimaru-sama…_

_That's because you've never seen me drunk before, in my wild youth… Actually, I'd rather it remain that way… Ah! No, hold that scotch right where it is! I can feel my hangover rising already, let's not make it worse. _


End file.
